iplayer

Brits have been able to stream BBC audio content to the iPlayer Radio app for a couple of years now, as long as they're using a phone. Now the company has decided to spit out an alternative made just for tablets, and it's included a few new features to boot.

A tablet comes with a few inherent advantages over a phone, and this app taps into that for full effect.

Here's one for UK folks—BBC iPlayer has been updated with some cool features just in time for the holidays. Should you find yourself without sufficient bandwidth, you can entertain yourself with your favorite programs offline for 30 days. You just need to download them to your device. As if we weren't already jealous enough of your iPlayer access.

Back in September, the BBC iPlayer jumped to version 2.0 and introduced the ability for users to download full episodes and store them for up to 30 days. At the time, the feature only worked on the eleven devices that the developers tested. Now it should work on any Android device running Ice Cream Sandwich or above.

For our readers across the pond, BBC iPlayer takes some of the network's shows and provides them for easy viewing on Android devices. What about the TV? The latest version of the app has that covered too. This would be a surprise, but we already spilled the beans on this release a few days ago. We knew this update was to coincide with the launch of Chromecasts in the UK on March 19th, and now it's here.

The UK citizens have sounded off on the BBC iPlayer's Play Store reviews, loudly and often: it's sitting at a depressing 2.9 stars, with more 1-star reviews than any others. The Beeb has been slowly improving the streaming video app, and today it gets a long-overdue update to version 1.7, finally including support for 10-inch tablets. I honestly have no idea why that was such a hurdle for an international media company, but hey, there it is.

For those unfamiliar, the BBC iPlayer allows our friends in the United Kingdom to watch live BBC programming on the go. Featured shows and up to seven days of previous content are also available for streaming. The application is incompatible with international devices, so don't bother paying the Play Store a visit if London is more than a couple hundred miles away from where you live. And the latest update to the app ushers in support for 1080p displays, allowing it to take advantage of the latest-gen handsets.

The BBC iPlayer video application has been available to Android-totting Englishmen for some time, but the audio equivalent has sadly lagged behind. Today the app finally lands on Android, and it was worth the wait: BBC Licence Fee subscribers can listen to the various radio stations over WiFi or mobile Internet, and it even works when they travel abroad. Unfortunately, the service isn't available to international users at any price.

The interface of iPlayer Radio is an interesting mix of Holo elements and unique ideas, particularly a station selector that apes an old-school rotary phone dialer.

Today, the UK's public broadcasting service, the BBC, upgraded its mobile app for Android. The update brings improvements to the UI to bring the interface a bit more in line with Android's Holo guidelines. The new version also adds support for Jelly Bean 4.2, improved video streaming over WiFi, and a new content channel.

When Adobe announced the end of Flash for Android, it had a particular impact in the UK, as it was the plugin of choice for BBC's iPlayer video streaming service. With Flash for Android now officially discontinued for devices that haven't installed it previously (and all Android 4.1 devices), this is obviously a problem.

Thankfully, BBC wasn't horribly slow to respond, and has launched the BBC Media Player, which allows all BBC video content to be played back Flash-free.

The English domestic football season may have already come to a dramatic close with the red and blue sides of Manchester fighting it out for the Premier League title, but there's no time to rest with Euro 2012 just around the corner.

The competition kicks off on June 8th, with the first match between host nation Poland and Greece kicking off at 5pm BST (12pm EST), and with your Android device in toe, you can make sure that you don't miss a single thing that happens between then and the final.